


A Revelation

by sacredsymbol821



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23388568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sacredsymbol821/pseuds/sacredsymbol821
Summary: There are many things that Nikolai Trevelyan isn't used too. Having the ability to work through what he's feeling is one of them.
Relationships: Male Inquisitor/Cassandra Pentaghast
Kudos: 5





	A Revelation

Nikolai rose, dressed and went downstairs to meet the day. His shoulder still burning reminded him that he shouldn't have stepped in front of Dorian and that Qunari assassin the day before, but he would do it again. He made sure, when he went down to breakfast, to not move it so much. It still complained, which caused him to glower when he heard Varric say that his stoney face was almost paralyzing that morning. He watched Cassandra’s eyes dart over to him when Varric said that, but she was on the other end of the dining hall and also still very mad at Varric for lying to her about Hawke.

If Nikolai was in her shoes, he would have been too. He realized that he had been staring at the Seeker for a second too longer than was socially acceptable, and put his eyes on his oatmeal. He forgot about his shoulder for a second and picked up the spoon with his right hand and felt his shoulder protest at the notion. He was not about to let oatmeal best him, and eventually put the warm soft food into his mouth before quickly putting the spoon down. Then, he got up, and left the dining hall, but spared a look behind him to watch Cassandra and Varric for a few more seconds. 

Hawke, thankfully, was also there, her arms folded over her chest as she watched them both with a neutral face. 

They seemed to be behaving well enough. 

Nikolai made sure Cassandra wasn’t going to charge the dwarf again, because the last time had been terrible for the three of them. 

Finally, he turned his head. 

At that moment, Hawke spoke to him, and she was so close to his ear that a chill ran up his spine. 

“Inquistor, would you mind me prying for a minute?” She asked.

He turned his head, finally to the other mage.

“Prying about what?” He narrowed his eyes at her, as he had no idea what she was talking about. 

“If you love someone, you should tell them.” She simply said.

She certainly did not mince words, but he had no idea what she was talking about, so he squinted at her harder. She did not mean any ill will to him, he knew that. 

“I’ll keep that in mind if it comes up. Thank you.” He said, and walked toward the courtyard. 

He was so distracted by what Hawke had said to him, that he almost ran headlong into Commander Helaine.

“Good morning, boy.” She said to him. Most people called him Inquistor, and the name reminded him of a very old teacher he had at the Circle, so it caused him to stop in his tracks. 

“Commander Helaine? Can I help you?” He asked, wondering what he had done to deserve this morning as punishment. 

“A Knight Enchanter knows how to manage their injuries, but that shoulder is holding you back from even accessing your magic.” She said.

He blinked at her. 

“I can access my magic just fine.” He sighed. He was not about to admit that he had not tried since he got back from the prior mission. 

“Then prove it.” She told him. 

Carefully, he twisted his hand and felt the familiar tingling sensation, followed by a wisp of cold as snow gathered in his hand. He looked at Commander Helaine triumphantly. 

“But can you use that hand in combat, Inquistor?” She asked. 

Nikolai put his hand on his face. He heard a sizzle then and had to spin very fast to dodge out of the way of Commander Helaine’s attack, which he felt singe his Inquistor clothes. His shoulder, which had been protesting all morning, began to burn, and he winced as he brought his other hand to it to try and suppress the burning sensation. 

“There are way too many people here counting on you for you to not get your injuries looked at.” She told him while he grimaced. He did not trust himself to open his mouth, because then he would let out a shout of pain. 

Keeping his lip bitten, he simply nodded. At the end of the day, he went to the medical tent and got it treated. He had already made a mental note to talk to Commander Helaine about what that had been all about. 

>>>>

When he went to talk to Commander Helaine about the stunt she had pulled a few days prior, all she had done was pull a blindingly bright sword on him, which he dodged. 

“This is getting very annoying!” He remarked after he dodged it. 

“Most people tell me what they want before they try to kill me.” He frowned. That was not necessarily true, but he was not about to tell Commander Helaine that.

Commander Helaine just sighed. 

“Knight Enchanters are meant to fight on the front lines. You dodge like you fight on the front lines. Does it not bother you that you can’t?” She asked.

He crossed his arms, and thought about it. He had been fighting on the frontlines since the war between the Circle and Templars had started. He had the scars on his back to prove this. Adjusting to fighting behind Cassandra had been a change he had not been used to, especially because she was a Seeker at first. He stopped calling her Seeker a long time ago, however.

The Commander was waiting for an answer. 

“I never thought I could.” He answered. In a traditional setting, at least.

“But you have the makings of a Knight Enchanter, Inquistor. You will be able to fight on the front lines. All I need from you is to be able to focus.”

“So that’s what you attacked me with?” Nikolai asked. 

She held her hand aloft, and a golden blade came out of her hand. 

Nikolai had studied many types of magic in the circle, but this was the first he had seen of this. His mouth dropped open just a little. 

“It’s-” He began. The pure amount of energy was overwhelming for a second. 

“In order to summon this, you must concentrate your entire being into the hilt.” She continued. He stared at the hilt, wondering what magic this could have been. He had paid attention in all of his classes at the Circle, but he had never heard of this. Or had he and he just couldn’t remember?

“It’s pure energy.” He finally said. 

Commander Helaine almost smiled then. Even though her face stayed firm, her eyes twinkled with mirth. 

“It’s more than that. The Knight Enchanter class can only be wielded by a select few. I may be old, but I know when one can wield it. You can, if you so wished, Inquistor.” She told him. 

Nik had never been presented with an opportunity to do this before. He could not lie to himself and say that he did not want to. He could practically feel the hilt calling to him from the Fade. 

“Thank you for letting me inspect the blade.” He told Knight Commander Helaine, giving her the hilt back. 

“What do you think of my proposal?” She asked.

He looked back at the hilt on her waistband.

“I accept.” He said.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The first and second sessions went horribly, by Nik’s standards. He knew so much about all the other schools of magic- he had trained two apprentices, both of who had gone on to become Enchanters before everything fell apart that he had forgotten how to learn. It did not help that Commander Helaine was a strict teacher. So strict, that Nikolai still had welts from getting hit by the wooden sword. He woke early, trained early, and then went straight to war meetings. He could not sleep on his side comfortably, and had not even seen a sliver of his blade come out the way Helaine’s had days earlier. He was beginning to wonder if he was stuck the way he was forever when he rolled out of bed painfully for the next weeks session. 

He went down the stairs, which were dark, as the sun was not up, and opened the door before walking past it. He was not sure how Cassandra, with her heavy armor, managed to be unseen before she wanted to be seen. He had seen and fought with many Templars in his time, but they had never had that ability, and when she appeared almost out of thin air, he jumped back about ten feet. 

“Good Morning, Cassandra. Can I help you with something?” He said as his heart recovered from the mini heart attack he had sustained at the shadow he did not know suddenly moving towards him. 

“Good Morning, Inquistor. Why have you been leaving your quarters so early?” She asked. 

That was when he realized that he had not been telling anyone about these visits to achieve nothing early in the morning. Then he realized that his advisors had not told the others about Commander Helaine. Who knew what things Cassandra and the others thought he was doing this early in the morning. He sighed. 

"Well." He began, leaning against the wall instead of standing on his full weight- right onto a fresh bruise. It was all he could do to keep from wincing. 

"Our enemies are becoming stronger so I am getting training earlier." He said. The Commander Helaine thing would have taken much too long to explain, and he knew in his heart that she hated lateness. However, he could never blow Cassandra off, even if he tried. She was a trusted ally. He hoped she thought the same of him.

"I see. So the dwarf was not lying this time." Cassandra said. 

That caused him to narrow his eyes. 

"Excuse me?" 

"Varric said you were… vagabonding in the morning." Cassandra told him. 

"Vagabonding?" Nikolai repeated incredulously. What was there even to do so early in the morning in Skyhold that would count as vagabonding? He did not give that question the thought he should've, instead passing his hands over his eyes to hide his distaste at even being mentioned in the same realm as that. Not because he didn't want people to see him put out, but because he didn't want her to see him put out. 

It was then he realized that Cassandra had a lot of exceptions in his life, and that caused his heart to freeze, before the thought was gone quickly as it came. 

He crossed his arms. 

"It is a good thing Varric isn't our spymaster. I am not vagabonding, Cassandra. This I promise you." He had no time to be vagabonding and she knew this. However, he did not blame her for doing her due diligence. He did not blame her at all after what Varric had done to her.

"I believe you. I am sorry to disturb you, Inquisitor." Cassandra said. He watched her leave. Even before his next session with Helaine, he was doomed to failure by not being able to focus to summon a spectral blade. He was not haunted by his inability to learn, but by a certain Seeker. 

>>>>

Nikolai became competent enough in the lore of the Knight Enchanters over the rest of the week to make his own hilt. He crafted an obsidian hilt in the forge by himself. It wasn't flashy, and it did not need to be. That was what Commander Helaine herself said. Yet he still could not summon the blade, no matter how hard he tried. Between the work that had to be done, the Chantry asking him about Divine candidates (which scared him more than he'd admit to anyone, and he did not know why), and the mission he'd been given- to fight a Red Templar horror in Emprise du Lion, the only thing he was capable of was thinking about the fight ahead. 

The hilt was an unusable trophy at this point in time. The day before they were to depart, he was staring at the blade in frustration, when Commander Helaine sat in front of him. 

"I have figured out your problem." She announced. He stared up from the blade at her with it in his hand, pointed towards the air. 

"What- What is that?" He panted. 

"You must stop fighting your instincts and feelings. It has gotten you this far, but it is the fighting style of a survivor, and not a warrior." She finished. 

That was how he had kept his students- and the remnants of the Ostwick Circle- alive. He went to tell her this when he looked at the sun and saw that the daily war meeting was about to start. They had no chance to speak afterwards, as he and his party ventured out to the Exalted Plains. 

Nikolai was always looking around when outside Skyhold. It was impossible to see in the Emprise du Lion anyway because of the snow. Everytime he stepped in snow, he remembered passing out in the snow after Corypheus attacked Haven. He still got embarrassed whenever Varric mentioned that Cassandra had carried him back to camp. He still saw Red Templar remnants wherever he went, and he did not doubt that the Red Templar Horror they were hunting was somewhere in the vicinity of the town. 

“Does it have to be so cold everywhere we go?” Dorian asked, breaking the silence of the party crunching through the snow. 

“Yes, Sparkler. Unfortunately, the weather down here is not as cold as Northern Thedas.” Varric replied. 

“It is also the Winter.” Cassandra added, causing Dorian to tilt his head toward her.

“How do you people survive down here?” He asked. If they were hunting pretty much anything else aside from a Red Templar Horror, Nikolai would have joined in on the banter. As it was, he was much too focused on spotting it before it could hurt his friends. The Red Templar Horrors usually left some magical dust behind, but the snow that had started before had covered this one’s tracks well. There were also no Red Templars to be found, and that made the situation even odder. Red Templar Horrors were usually preceded by a bunch of Red Templars before finally coming out to finish their prey. 

Through the snow, Nikolai was surprised to see a glow on the horizon. The closer he looked, the more he saw it was red. No one in the party noticed it, as they continued talking. 

“I’d put my head up if you don’t want to get smacked by something red!” Nik warned them, and they all became quiet. He heard Cassandra ready her sword and shield, and waited. He then heard the sound it was making leave his ears. It was so fast, he thought he imagined it for a second. When he heard it again, it was behind them. Since the others had not heard it in the first place, they were slower to turn around than he was. Nikolai did not have time to reach for his hilt, as useless as it was. Cassandra was the slowest to react, and the Red Templar Horror finally decided to show its face, behind the Seeker who was still turning around. Before anyone could react, the monster clawed the back of Cassandra. Nik only saw the red spatter across the ground. 

A funny feeling began in his stomach. He was so not used to the sensation that when he went to attack, he knocked into his staff like he was learning how to attack in the circle again, and he watched the ball of ice he was shooting go far past the Horror’s head, almost hitting Dorian, who quickly side stepped it before looking at him. Nikolai wondered what was going on, before he felt a vibrating at his belt.

The Red Templar Horror walked past Cassandra, who was already on one knee and went straight to him. 

He shot at it again, and he hit it, but not before his staff cracked- split in two. He was defenseless, just like when those Templars had ambushed him before he had gone to the Inquistion. He had barely any time to think afterwards- He’d spent a few months recovering from the torture he had suffered at the hands of those Templars, only to go to the Conclave, only for that to literally blow up in his face all within a span of a few months. He watched a black ball pass in front of his face, and jumped backward. An arrow came out of nowhere to hit the thing in the chest. It did not budge, and came toward him again. 

He was suddenly alone again. Or he thought he was, before he looked down at his waist and saw the hilt was buzzing. Instead, Nikolai took his hand out and shot at the Red Templar Horror’s feet to slow it down. It stopped in its tracks. He didn’t even hear the silver blade coming from the other side of the Horror until he saw a sword sticking out of the monsters abdomen. Despite being frozen in place, it turned the upper part of its body around, and swung at the only person in the party that used a sword. He heard a thump and then a collapse.

If that feeling that had caused him to miss before was in his stomach, it was burning everywhere now. He recognized the feeling then. It was a boiling rage that he had not felt since he was twelve years old. He was no longer a defenseless twelve year old at the mercy of his violent uncle, though. He let the rage, for the first time in twenty three years, consume him, and finally grabbed the hilt with his right hand, the hand that would usually support the staff, but did not swing it. When the blade touched his hand, he felt the energy from the Fade spring to life in his hand, and an icy blue blade came from the Obsidian hilt he had crafted a few days earlier. When it went into the Horror’s chest where Cassandra’s sword had been, it looked at him and opened its mouth, but it didn’t say anything before it spattered. He had never watched where the demons went when they exploded, but this time he saw it fly up over their heads and into the Fade. 

“Cassandra’s Down!” He heard Dorian say, and Nikolai looked at the spectral blade he just summoned and put it back on its hilt before running over. Dorian knew a lot about Magic, but had never learned healing magic, which Nikolai knew.

“How did that thing move so fast?” Varric asked. No one answered him.

Cassandra was alive, but bleeding very fast. The one swipe in the back of her had taken more than a chunk of skin out. 

“I am too tired to fully heal her, but I can stabilize her.” Nikolai said automatically. He had done this before, and yet he felt his hands shake as Dorian and Varric ran to the nearest encampment to get more mages who hadn’t worn themselves out during a surprise attack. 

Why was he shaking so badly, even as he closed the nastiest of the three scratches on her back? He would heal when necessary, but he could not figure out why. He moved onto the second scratch, wondering what on Thedas was wrong with him lately.

His mind idly went back over the week's events as he went to the third scratch. Cassandra had checked on him two days before and had been genuinely concerned about where he was going, even if Varric had embellished that so far that it was not on any reality that Nikolai was alive on. The feeling crept up on him, and he didn’t even realize what it was until it was much too late. He immediately took his hands off of her when he saw the medics come running, and went to retrieve his staff. Only when his hands had to grab his staff did he really think about the feeling he was beginning to experience. It was a scary, new feeling that Nik was never sure he had felt in his life that made his chest all aflutter and he felt warmer than he was used to feeling in Emprise du Lion.

There was a reason that Cassandra had so many exceptions in his life. He was just too cowardly to think it. He grabbed the second part of his staff out a few feet away from the first one. As he did so, he looked at the medics hurrying away and saw Cassandra’s face. 

He was helplessly, hopelessly, in love with the Seeker. The thought hit him harder than the Horror ever could, and it took him a second to get his breath back. His heart finally seemed to loosen when he started breathing again, but then went right back to hurting again. He rolled his eyes at his heart, took his two staff pieces, and went right back to try and jamming them together as he walked behind the medics, though it was not going to work like that, as it needed magical mending. He knew that the feeling was not going to go away as much as he both wanted and did not want it too, so he focused on telling Dorian and Varric she was going to be okay. They both looked relieved when he said that, and he was glad for that. He went to sleep that night and had still not forgotten about his revelation from earlier. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This idea came to me and I thought it was gonna be short and sweet like all my other Dragon Age Fics so many years ago. Then it kept get longer and longer and I could not stop writing it. Part of me wants DA4 yesterday, but also, instead of getting rid of the DAI vibes I was trying to get rid of, I have now invited them in.   
> Excuse any lore errors on this. It's been five years, and I looked up some stuff to remember (mainly the Orlesian names because oh boy). Thanks for reading by the way, it really means a lot to me. And maybe, just maybe, I will need to revisit this very soon when I do that replay I was forbidding myself to do on Spring Break.


End file.
